Working toward self-determination for the West Papuan people

wp 1) Top films for festival

FILMMAKER Damien Faure will introduce his films at the Islands in the World Oceania International Film Festival (IWOIFF) later this month. The graduate of the Fine Art School of St-Etienne, with honours, Mr Faure directed his first documentary about West Papua in 2001.

His film West Papua is focused on the conflict raging for 40 years West New Guinea and how the Papuan people struggled for survival against the Indonesian military. His biography released to this newspaper by the organisers of IWOIFF said: "Selected in many festivals around the world, the film won the Special Jury Prize at the Film Festival of Human Rights in Paris in 2003." It said the film was also broadcast on France Television.

"Following the shooting, he published the article The forgotten war Papuans in Le Monde Diplomatique in August 2002," his biography stated. With this awareness, Mr Faure released Sampari (co-produced with FranceTV) — the second documentary on the subject that focused on the diplomatic battle at the UN Papuans at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2007.

Selected in many international festivals, the film won the Grand Prize Documentary Film Festival on Human Rights in Kiev in 2008. Also according to this biography, in 2010, ARTE (French Channel) gave Mr Faure the opportunity to make a third film about the Papuan issues: The Colonisation forgotten.

A DVD of his three films on West Papua was released in 2012 by Editions aaa production. "All the problems linked to war were recurrent in his films." In 2004, he accomplished Three cheers for the independence of Texas — a documentary film where he lives in the vastness of the Ouarsenis (a series of mountains in North West Algeria) with his father who survived the war in Algeria. Recently, the film received the Audience Award at Film Festival St-Ouen. Nowadays, Mr Faure is preparing his first feature-length fiction of the Papuan rebels.